


changes (turn and face the strange)

by ZombieBabs



Series: Breaking & Entering [2]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Headcanon, Humor, Self-Indulgent, Slice of Life, lockpicking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 21:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7657396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZombieBabs/pseuds/ZombieBabs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year into Ruby's internship, Ruby tries to teach Dr. Strand how to pick locks.</p>
<p>*Edited 6.05.17</p>
            </blockquote>





	changes (turn and face the strange)

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from David Bowie's song Changes.

It’s a slow day at the Strand Institute. Most days after Dr. Strand finishes a case are. Ruby likes the how busy the office can be. She likes the excitement, even if she isn’t directly involved. But she likes the quiet just as well. Especially on days where the rain pounds against the floor-to-ceiling windows, when Dr. Strand’s office is lit with the yellow light of a single lamp.

The lamp has been pulled close, shining onto the work space Dr. Strand cleared for the project in front of him.

Not that the light is doing any good. Not when the man beside her can’t freaking _see_.

“If you’re not going to wear your glasses, what the hell am I wasting my time for?” Ruby asks.

“Language,” Dr. Strand says, but the reminder is halfhearted at best. He ignores the frames folded on his desk, pushed out of sight as he works. 

At least he isn’t scowling at them anymore. _That_ lasted a week after he brought them home with him from his eye exam--an exam she had to harp him into making in the first place. Now, he prefers to pretend they don’t exist at all, never mind the fact she’s caught him pinching the bridge of his nose _twice_ today in an effort to fight off a headache. 

She lets him fiddle with the lock for another minute before she sighs and takes it from him. She shows him again what to do, going slow so he can watch. “Like this.”

He squints at the lock once she hands it back to him. Ruby nudges the frames of his glasses into view, taking care to be as unsubtle as possible. His eyes flicker down, but again he ignores them. “How far have you gotten into that book?”

“Half-way,” she says.

His eyebrows go up. “Half-way? I gave it to you yesterday.”

Ruby huffs and crosses her arms in front of her. “I’m not _lying_. I have the notes to prove it.”

He meets her glare with a stare of his own. His blue, blue eyes give nothing away. He just looks at her, waiting.

Ruby rolls her own eyes and shakes herself out of her defensive posture. It’s reflexive. At school, at home, with her friends. But she doesn’t have to be defensive, not when she’s at the Institute. Not with Dr. Strand. He’s patient with her, in a way most adults aren’t.

“Sorry,” she says with a shrug. “I took it home, okay?”

She has no idea why she feels so embarrassed. It’s not like she’s up to anything weird. Just a bit of reading. But her embarrassment isn’t helped when he smiles at her, the sideways smile he hides away much of the time.

“What?” Ruby demands. “It’s interesting, alright?”

“Alright,” he says, still smiling. 

Ruby makes a frustrated sound, but draws the line at stamping her foot, no matter how satisfying it would feel. “You’re impossible.”

He doesn’t even try to deny it. He scrapes the pin against the padlock, missing the hole completely. “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

Ruby snorts. “Okay, so, basically, this lady is an idiot.”

Dr. Strand laughs, the odd little exhale of amusement he does. “Is that so?”

“She thinks ghosts are real because she’s either too high or too drunk to remember moving her own Solitaire cards. That or her thirteen cats aren’t enough to keep her company and she’s just looking for attention.” 

“And yet you find this interesting?”

“Well, yeah,” Ruby says. She shuffles from one foot to the other. “It’s like a train wreck, right?”

His smile widens a little. It always makes Ruby think he’s in on some secret. Or like he’s in on a joke only he understands. When she first started working for him, it aggravated her. Like maybe he thought she was stupid and was making little effort to hide it. After a few weeks, she realized it’s just something his face does. “And what of her methods of investigation?”

“What methods?” Ruby asks. 

She invited a bunch of her friends over and waved some flashlights around, like an episode of Scooby freakin’ Doo. They tried to get the whole thing on tape, but even she admits all it sounded like was static. It was her friend who kept saying it sounded like words. Shitty friend, if you ask me, messing with her like that.”

“Language,” he says, but there’s no real bite in the reminder. “Good work, Carv--Ruby. Let me know when you’ve finished the book. I have another I think you’ll find just as interesting.”

“ _Gee_ , boss. After all this time, you’d think you’d remember my _gosh darned_ name.”

“Forgive me,” he says, sounding not at all repentant. He turns back to the lock in his hands and it takes him a few tries to actually get the pick into the keyhole.

“I can see from here you’re doing it wrong,” Ruby says. She can’t, but he’s going to give himself another headache if he keeps squinting like that.

Dr. Strand puts the lock down on the desk and sits back in his chair with a sigh. He’s back to glaring at his glasses. She thinks it’s a step in the right direction if he’s at least acknowledging the problem. 

“They’re not that--” she starts, meaning to say ‘bad.’ But she doesn’t get the chance to finish.

“What prompted the change?”

“What?”

“Your name. Why change from Carver to Ruby?”

Ruby shrugs. “Just trying it out.”

He doesn’t press her for more information and Ruby doesn’t elaborate.

The thing is, she could tell him. He might even be proud of her. Of the changes she’s made in life, ever since the day she broke into his office and, instead of calling the police, he offered her a job.

But she doesn’t tell him.

She doesn’t mention how all of her friends abandoned her. Landing a job wasn’t the most terrible thing she could do--some of her friends flip burgers for extra cash a few hours a week, after all. A job in a big, fancy office building, however, was a betrayal Ruby hadn’t anticipated. It meant she wasn’t one of them anymore.

It sucked. At first. Without her friends to hang around with, she was tempted to do something big to prove to them she _was_ one of them--the job at the Institute didn’t change her.

But it did change her. Seeing Dr. Strand’s assistants running back and forth from his office. Reading the crazy books he placed on her desk. Scanning case reports before she filed them away. It made her feel like she was part of something _bigger_. Something _better_ than sitting in the woods, skipping classes and drinking beers stolen out of Mike’s dad’s cooler. 

Instead of trying to win back her friends, Ruby found herself lounging on the couch at home with one of Dr. Strand’s books on her lap and a notebook on the table. 

She started studying more, completing not just Dr. Strand’s homework for her, but also the homework assigned in class. Her grades and test scores improved, surprising not just her teachers, but her mother as well. When she switched from going by her last name to her first, her mother all but crossed herself, thanking the Lord Jesus her baby was finally growing up and _making something of herself_.

If Ruby tells Dr. Strand about all of this, about all of the changes he’s inspired in her life, he might _actually_ be proud of her. Which is exactly why she _doesn’t_ tell him. She doesn’t want to spoil it, if everything goes to shit. She’s used to disappointing everyone else in her life--if she can’t maintain this new Ruby, she doesn’t want to disappoint _him_. Not when he’s done so much for her already. 

He trusted her and gave her an opportunity she never dreamed possible. He lets her be a part of the weird work he does at the Institute. And when she’s done with the tasks he assigns her, he lets her stay as long as she wants, as long as she uses the time to study. He’s even helped her with her math homework, after finding her scowling at her textbook, her notebook nothing but furious squiggles.

And the paycheck he sends her home with each week still, quite frankly, sends her reeling. 

It would kill her to ruin all of that. So she doesn’t say anything. Better to just enjoy it while it lasts.

“It suits you,” he says. And that’s apparently the end of the matter.

One of Dr. Strand’s other assistants knocks at the door and pokes his head into the office, his arms laden with notebooks and loose sheets of paper. She’s seen him around, but the older assistants tend to be too busy to stop and chat. “Excuse me, Dr. Strand? Do you have time to discuss the interview with Ms. Rutherford?”

Dr. Strand waves the younger man in and Ruby closes the door behind her as she leaves. Her desk is right outside of Dr. Strand’s office, like she imagines a real secretary’s would be. He doesn’t make her take any of his calls--he has other people for that--but his assistants, and sometimes even clients, have to pass her by in order to see him. Ruby likes it that way. It makes her feel involved, even if she’s not allowed to work on the cases themselves.

She settles down with Dr. Strand’s book. She lets the murmur of voices through frosted glass wash over her as she reads. A year ago, she might have tried to pick out bits and pieces of the conversation. But for now, she takes a few notes, once again absorbed in the documentation of the most ridiculous paranormal investigation she’s ever encountered. And over the last year, she’s encountered quite a few.

Ruby looks up from her book only when Dr. Strand’s assistant exits, more paper clutched to his chest than when he entered. He leaves the door open, but Dr. Strand makes no request for her to shut it. When she glances over, he’s bent over the desk, the padlock and lock pick back in his hands as he tries to puzzle it out. Ruby smiles and goes back to her book. 

It’s toward the end of her shift, when Ruby is turning the last pages in her book, when Dr. Strand approaches her. She nearly does a double-take, not believing her eyes when she first looks at him.

He’s actually wearing his glasses.

He holds up the padlock, sprung open. He looks equal parts embarrassed and smug.

“You got it!” Ruby holds up a hand for a high-five, then laughs when he awkwardly taps her palm with the tips of his fingers. 

She’ll get a real high-five out of him one day, but until then, she respects the fact he’s not really a touchy-feely kind of guy. Seeing how they started with her holding her hand out, feeling more and more like an idiot, with him just _staring_ at her hand, like it was a curiosity he’d never seen before, she figures they’re on the right track.

“Yes, well,” he says. He clears his throat and nods at the book in her hands. “You’re nearly finished?”

“Yeah, only a few pages left.” She wonders if she’ll ever get used to the feeling of finishing a book, of turning the last page to see the Acknowledgements or the Author’s Notes staring up at her.

“I’ll have another waiting on my desk before you go. Two, perhaps, if you’ve begun to take them home with you.”

Ruby puts on a show of having to think about it, the smile tugging at her lips betraying her. “Yeah, okay. Might as well.”

He nods and turns to go back into his office. 

“Hey boss,” Ruby calls out, just as he reaches the doorway. She taps the outer corner of her eye, indicating his glasses. “They suit you.”

He doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing. “Good night, Ruby.”

“You too, Dr. Strand.”

**Author's Note:**

> *Edited 6.05.17


End file.
